Opinion: 5 cities getting the worst deals from sports teams

Residents of Milwaukee and its surrounding county are on the hook for $400 million over the next 20 years to benefit the deep-pocketed new owners of the Milwaukee Bucks.

By

JasonNotte

Columnist

We hope everyone in Cincinnati had a great time watching baseball’s All-Star Game, seeing Pete Rose step on a Major League Baseball field and witnessing Mike Trout secure home-field advantage during the World Series for the American League.

It’s only a few more weeks until the National Football League’s Bengals and owner Mike Brown steal their joy again.

Earlier this week, HBO’s John Oliver dug deeply into the subject of stadium financing and the use of public tax dollars on private facilities. It’s a topic that we may have addressed here a time or two. With the San Diego Chargers, Oakland Raiders and St. Louis Rams all threatening to move to Los Angeles if their towns don’t give them money for new stadiums, it’s tough not to view the encroaching NFL season warily if you pay your taxes regularly. However, despite the fact that taxpayers have given 22 NFL teams an average of $250 million apiece for stadiums since 1997, the NFL isn’t solely to blame here.

No, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League have all played chicken with taxpayers and threatened to take their ball (or puck) to another city willing to foot the bill for new facilities. You don’t even have to dig that far into history to find examples. In fact, here are just five towns that are being squeezed as we speak:

Minneapolis

Minnesota Vikings

How do you get taxpayers to chip in $500 million on a more than $1 billion stadium when only one city, Indianapolis ($620 million), has ever paid that much. Tell them you’ll move their 54-year-old NFL franchise to Los Angeles.

Vikings owner Zygi Wilf did just that and got the state of Minnesota and the city of Minneapolis to go along for the ride. With the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome’s roof collapse moving games in 2010 and competing L.A. stadium plans just waiting for a team, Minnesota panicked and came up with a plan for a new stadium on the Metrodome site that the state would pay for through “charitable gambling.” Though the plan was approved in 2012, the funding portion never worked out and led to a tax on cigarette inventory instead.

Minneapolis, meanwhile, will end up paying $678 million over its 30-year payment plan once interest, operations and construction costs are factored in. The city earned a Super Bowl hosting gig in 2018, but also got a 150-page list of Super Bowl demands from the NFL that will only cost the host city and state more money. Oh, and the Vikings are playing yet another season in frosty outdoor TCF Stadium until their new digs are built. Awesome.

Atlanta

Atlanta Braves

Only in Atlanta is a $1.4 billion replacement for a 23-year-old stadium considered a bargain. However, Atlanta taxpayers are contributing $200 million to the new home of the NFL’s Atlanta Falcons and Major League Soccer’s Atlanta United FC. Cobb County, Georgia, wishes it got that lucky.

Cobb County will be borrowing $397 million via bonds, including nearly $300 million that will be paid from property taxes, to finance the new SunTrust Park after Braves ownership decided to leave its current digs at Turner Field for the suburbs. Opponents were barred from speaking against the lending scheme, the Braves’ president shrouded the deal in secrecy and the Georgia Supreme Court struck down an appeal against issuing the bonds just last month.

Yes, taxpayers had $400 million in property taxes that typically go toward roads and schools just handed to a team that left the only home it’s ever known. And they had no way to fight it. Why isn’t there more uproar, you ask? Besides the fact that Cobb County gagged anyone who dared try to debate it, much of the ire is focused on Braves ownership: media conglomerate Liberty Media
US:LMCA
It’s a faceless opponent built to absorb whatever criticism is thrown its way. Atlanta may have lost the Braves, but it saved a bundle compared to what Cobb County will be paying — even before interest — in years to come.

Glendale, Ariz.

Arizona Coyotes

Glendale is in the desert. It doesn’t need any more moments in the sun.

Within the past 10 years, Glendale has spent $308 million on a $455 million football stadium for the Arizona Cardinals, it entered a 15-year, $225 million arena management contract with the Arizona Coyotes and it paid millions more for a spring-training facility for baseball’s White Sox and Dodgers. How’s it working out for the city? Well, Glendale Mayor Jerry Weiers told ESPN Magazine his city lost $1 million on the Super Bowl in 2008 and “I totally believe we will lose money” on this year’s Super Bowl. With much of that spending coming before the recession, the city is in hefty debt.

However, it no longer wants to put up with any of it. It ended its lease with the Coyotes, which may attempt to leave for Las Vegas (more on that town later) if they can’t beat the city in court. The NHL would prefer to expand into its next market, but the Coyotes and their angry non-Glendale fans may not leave them much of a choice. The city won’t spend on a new arena, it seems more than happy to let Phoenix try to lure the Coyotes back when it builds a new arena for the Suns and it seems to be under the sound impression that it will never get out of its sports teams what it put into them.

Milwaukee, Wis.

Milwaukee Bucks

Kansas City has an empty Sprint Center just waiting for a tenant, and the St. Louis Blues don’t share their arena with an NBA team.

However, it took Anschutz Entertainment Group and MGM to build an arena in Las Vegas and securing 10,000 season-ticket commitments for a nonexistent team to convince the Milwaukee Bucks owners to threaten to move. When hedge fund sweethearts Wes Edens, Marc Lasry and Jamie Dinan, whose worth is measured in billions, bought the Bucks from longtime owner Herb Kohl for $550 million last year, it was believed the team wouldn’t go anywhere. However, a stipulation in the deal noted that the team wouldn’t move if the owners replaced the 27-year-old Bradley Center. However, the league noted that if construction didn’t begin on the new arena by the end of this year, the league would buy the team back and move it.

The new owners, sensing they have a bit of leverage, made the city an offer: Pay us $250 million plus interest for a new arena or lose the team. That includes $90 million in bonds that accrue interest for more than a dozen years before they can be paid off. That interest would add another $170 million to the existing $250 million cost. Surprisingly, in a town that will be paying off the Milwaukee Brewers Miller Park (built in 1996) until 2020, this is not going over well. Unfortunately, Milwaukee’s problem just became Wisconsin’s as the state senate approved a deal for public funding that Gov. Scott Walker is expected to approve. Milwaukee and its surrounding county are now on the hook for what will add up to $400 million over 20 years. Thanks, Vegas.

Washington, D.C.

D.C. United was one of the league’s founding franchises and has been around since 1995. It’s called oversized RFK Stadium home during that time and is looking for a new stadium in the city. Unfortunately, land in D.C. is a bit hard to come by, so plans for a stadium in the industrial Buzzard Point neighborhood ballooned to a cost of $300 million. D.C. United is willing to pick up half of that, but it is asking the city to cough up the rest to pay for parcels of land currently owned by businesses.

Now, $150 million isn’t unprecedented in MLS terms. Denver and Commerce City, Colo., paid $174 million for the Colorado Rapids’ suburban home. Harrison and Newark, N.J., meanwhile, spent nearly $250 million to give the NY/NJ Red Bulls a new home near the Harrison PATH train station. However, the bevy of property and sales-tax breaks associated with D.C. United’s new stadium, and the fact that a portion of the city’s $150 million is coming out of a school-modernization program, is a bit much to swallow. However, D.C. United knows that there are enough towns in the Northern Virginia suburbs looking for a team to make them “big time” that it could have its pick if D.C. didn’t pay. It’s getting a half-price deal on the costliest soccer-only stadium in the country because D.C. doesn’t want the team to flee for the suburbs. If only it felt similarly about priced-out residents.

Jason Notte is a freelance writer based in Portland, Ore. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post and Esquire. Notte received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in 1998. Follow him on Twitter @Notteham.

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